Should phones with 512MB RAM cease to exist?

A lot of smartphones bearing 512MB RAM and sporting more recent Android mobile operating systems continue to exist in the market today. With full-blown apps slowly ceasing their support for these phones, take Facebook for example, Should brands still offer these low-end smartphones?

With the advent of technology advancement, most mobile apps offer more functionality at the expense of higher requirements. Week after week, apps oftentimes add new features in hopes to retain users and keep them using their applications. As such, incremental updates mean additional app space is needed to install new files for them to function well, and most phones offer very limited storage spaces, which would mean that you have to pick a handful of apps to install without going overboard.

Multitasking also isn’t that much of a possibility as phones generally tend to slow down or lag when using or switching in between apps. Despite these inconveniences, Why are brands still offering these to the market?

The reason is simple: they still believe that there is still a market for cheap, affordable phones. A lot of these phones are the ones that can be afforded by the mass market who only wants a fancy phone to use basic functions such as calls, messages, and camera for daily activities.

Lite versions of popular apps are also increasing, the latest to join this bandwagon is social microblogging website Twitter. Twitter may have recognized the proliferation of low-end devices. Google has also developed Android Go specifically to meet the demands of phones with measly hardware.

So should brands step up and stop offering phones with 512MB RAM? Yes, they should. We still need to be reminded, though, that this segment will continue to thrive on market demand, and brands will continue to release smartphones with similar specifications to remain competitive in this area.

There’s also that desire for brands to offer better hardware at competitive prices such as Cloudfone’s Spotify Lite that broke barriers and made a 1GB RAM phone priced at Php1,999USD 34INR 2,888EUR 32CNY 248 a few years back. We may not see that coming yet though due to increased exchange rates and costs which may affect overall pricing.

Until then, people will have no choice but to purchase these kinds of phones because that’s their only budget, and those are their only options.